Military Memories

I am finally getting around to writing thank-you notes to so many generous hosts during this past visit to India. But getting myself organized got me thinking of my childhood, specially since this time we visited Rajasthan where I last was when I was six or seven years old. It was the edge of the desert where we lived. There were scorpions and snakes, mainly scorpions. We had to shake out our shoes every day in case any venomous critter lurked within. The sandstorms were blinding, leaving everything coated in gritty, glittering powder. Everything was brown and dry, very few green things existed. We were the first occupants of the new, ugly MES flats that marked the continuation of the "ugly bureaucrat" style of architecture, begun I believe in the 1950s. Our first school bus was a horse-drawn tonga. Alas, no winsome "Basanti" from Sholay, just a series of withered old men. Then came a converted one-ton truck that ferried us all to our different schools. This was the tough-as-old-boots army brat lifestyle where fathers disappeared for two-three months at a time for exercises (or "maneuvers" as they are called here) and the cantonment became a community of women and children who depended on each other for moral support. We played outside, rode our bicycles madly for hours, went to the park where creaky old see-saws could upend you with their vicious lack of suspension. Later, when we moved out of the cantonment, I carpooled in the genteel company of a wealthy neighbor's daughter who would have been horrified at the hearty rigor of my military upbringing.

Going back this August, the changes were mindboggling to me. There were still plenty of camel-carts but the desert had disappeared. There are now trees everywhere, even middle-class army types seem to have more disposable income and the houses seem bigger and more posh (although the ugly MES flats are stubbornly long-lived). There is still poverty but the heartbreaking deprivation that I saw in my childhood is gone. These are, I think, the fruits of independence. My generation hopefully will not see, as my grandparents did under British rule, the absolute wretchedness that ruled everywhere around them. That misery exists, but it is more in pockets now, rather than spread everywhere. On the other hand, the gaps now are more apparent. Before, we all swam in the same murky sea of restricted consumer choices and dreamed our limited hopes of upward mobility (follow in parental footsteps or doctor/engineer/civil services). But now, the wealthy and even the upper-middle-class lead lives of comparable comfort to their western counterparts (with the added perks of servants and overflowing daily help with household chores). The lower-middle-class now have more wealth around them to compare their lot with and feel unhappy about.